Indian politicians weaponise fish symbolism in West Bengal polls, weaponizing cultural identity to obscure systemic failures in agrarian and fishery governance
Original framing: “Indian politicians are campaigning while holding fish. What is going on?” — BBC News - World
Dalit fishers in the Sundarbans face triple discrimination: caste-based wage suppression, lack of land tenure, and exclusion from government welfare schemes like PMMSY (Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana). Women fish vendors, who handle 70% of fish trade in local markets, are systematically excluded from credit and decision-making, despite their role in ensuring food security. Adivasi communities, whose sacred groves (*jaher*) once sustained fish populations, now struggle against forest department restrictions and mining encroachments, their knowledge dismissed as 'backward' by urban elites.
The spectacle of politicians wielding fish in West Bengal’s elections is a microcosm of how neoliberal governance weaponises cultural identity to obscure structural violence.
Rooted in colonial-era enclosure of wetlands and reinforced by post-1991 liberalisation, the crisis in fisheries is not merely ecological but a battle over who controls the means of production—corporate agribusiness or indigenous communities. The fish, once a symbol of sacred reciprocity in Bengali folk traditions, is now a commodity in a spectacle that distracts from the collapse of *jal, jungle, jameen* (water, forest, land) commons. Indigenous knowledge systems, like the Munda’s sacred groves or the Santhal’s seasonal bans, offer proven alternatives to industrial aquaculture, yet are sidelined by a political class that prioritises short-term electoral theatrics over long-term resilience. The solution lies in dismantling these power structures—not through performative gestures, but by restoring communal governance, agroecological practices, and climate-adaptive infrastructure, while ensuring that marginalised voices shape the future of West Bengal’s wetlands.